9) Innavigable Seas
and Sargassos Sea
Another subject of extreme importance in the
texts of Plato on Atlantis is the matter of the "innavigable seas". The
philosopher refers to these innavigable seas twice, one in the
Critias
and the other in the
Timaeus. In the
Timaeus (25d), Plato
mentions that when Atlantis sunk underseas, "the sea in the region became
impassable and impenetrable because of the shoals of mud in it, caused
by the subsidence of the island [of Atlantis]".
In the
Critias (108d) Plato repeats
the same story of the "impassable barrier of mud", adding the detail that
the island that sunk was indeed "greater than Libya and Asia put together".
The Greeks had no name for "continental" in the modern sense. So, they used
the word "island" for it, in the sense of an extension of land "isolated"
by the seas. This usage has caused an enduring difficulty for Atlantologists
unfamiliar with this fact. Such is the reason why they believe that Atlantis
was an island rather than a continent or a large piece of land of continental
size isolated by the seas.
But let us return to the matter of the
"innavigable seas". The Atlantic Ocean particularly in the region outside
the Strait of Gibraltar is actually very deep and very fit for navigation.
It apparently never posed a barrier for navigation and never presented
shoals of sand or mud either natural or as the result of the sinking of
any islands or continents there.
Hence, the oceanographers and other such
specialist put the words of Plato to rest, and started looking for Atlantis
elsewhere. In despair, some appealed to the Sargassos Seas, even today
a favorite theme of Atlantologists unaware of the recent advances
of Oceanography and of Mythological Exegesis. Indeed, the Sargassos Sea
got its name due to a mistake of Columbus.
Columbus believed to the day of his death
that he was heading to the fabulous Indies. The Indies are the true site of the Eldorado
and of Paradise, as any seasoned mariner well knows. Hence, when the great explorer saw
the Sargassos and flotsam of these seas, he immediately thought he had
reached the Indies and its fabled Sargassos Seas which are indeed shallow and treacherous,
just as Plato claimed. Columbus, thus, wrongly baptized the seas he discovered with
the hopeful but unfortunate name that persists even today.
In reality the true Sargassos Sea is the
one the Hindus call
Nalanala, meaning the same in Sanskrit. The
Indian "Sea of Sargassos" is indeed the South China Sea. This sea is the one of the Indonesian
region, which is no other than that of sunken Atlantis. These seas
are indeed shallow and full of reeds, sargassos, kelp, sandbars and coral
reefs which render its navigation next to impossible, except to the extremely
skilled local pilots.
What is more, the Indonesian Seas are prone
to a very peculiar event that is indeed linked with the Atlantean cataclysm,
just in the manner disclosed by Plato. When the Krakatoa volcano erupted
explosively, back in 1883, it caused one of the worst catastrophes ever
recorded by men. The explosion originated an immense tidal wave that killed some 40,000
people instantly. Far more persons died of famine, later on. But the most curious feature of its explosion was the liberation of immense floating banks of
pumice stone. These endured for months, impeding navigation in the region and causing the death of a large number of fishes and other marine organisms.
We can now understand the true meaning
of Plato's words. The "mud" in question is what Plato calls
pelos,
a Greek word meaning "slime", "clay", "mud", "muck", "silt", "ooze", "sediment".
In other words, this "mud" is the pumice stone and the fly ash erupted
by the giant volcanic explosion possibly one thousand times larger than
the Krakatoa eruption of 1883.